Powell May Name India-Pakistan Envoy

Published 8:00 pm, Thursday, January 3, 2002

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Friday he may send an envoy to South Asia to try to pull India and Pakistan away from confrontation.

"It's important to our international campaign against terrorism," Powell said of the Bush administration's effort to defuse the crisis.

The campaign against the Taliban and the al-Qaida terrorism network in Afghanistan could suffer if the dispute between India and Pakistan gets out of control, Powell said in a BBC radio and television interview.

Powell said he would make a decision early next week, after a South Asia summit meeting in Nepal in which he hoped Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would meet.

"We will try to be helpful," Powell said. "We will encourage them to talk to one another."

Francis Taylor, a former U.S. Force general who is director of the State Department's counterterrorism office, is due to go to India and Pakistan next week.

The department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said "there are other things to be done" by an envoy from Washington.

Powell and Boucher gave no indication the administration had a proposal to resolve the half-century dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, a territory they already have fought two wars over.

"Kashmir is a difficult issue," Powell said.

With troops massed along the border, "we have to use all our political and diplomatic efforts now to solve this immediate short-term problem and then deal with the long-term issues that exist between the two nations," he said.

Powell and Boucher praised Musharraf for arresting suspected terrorists and making what Powell described as "bold statements" against terrorism.

"Fundamentally, we think he has made the strategic decision to move against terrorism," Boucher said.

The State Department said in a report last spring that Pakistan permitted Kashmiri terrorists to train in Pakistan. Boucher said he did not know whether that training had ended.

Tensions between India and Pakistan were heightened by an attack on India's Parliament Dec. 13 in which 14 people, including the five attackers, died. India accused Pakistan of being behind the attack. Pakistan denied the accusation.

Powell on Friday said both nations had suffered from terrorist attacks. "I think both the Indian government and the Pakistani government realize that it is not in anyone's interest for a war to break out in South Asia," he said.